Micro Persuasion has re-posted an interesting article from a public-relations industry newsletter: It’s Time to Take Blogs Seriously — and Maybe to Develop One of Your Own.

Some highlights:

“To those people who still think that blogs are ‘loose cannons,’ I’d say that they should embrace the revolution, or become cannon fodder,” says [Shift Communications principal Todd] Defren.
…

Some of the rules [Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble] suggests in his manifesto should be followed by anyone who wants to run a corporate weblog:

• Tell the truth
• Post fast on good news or bad
• Use a human voice
• Have a thick skin
• If you screw up, acknowledge it
• If you don’t have the answers, say so
• Never lie
• Never hide information
• Link to your competitors and be nice to them

…

“The empowering nature of the Internet will allow users to blog with or without corporate permission,” Defren says. “The blogger who is encouraged with tools, freedom, and a few simple rules-of-the-road becomes a valuable advocate for the company. The blogger whose ambitions are repudiated simply sets up shop at home and spends their free time gossiping about the company’s embarrassing hiccups.”

All sounds like good advice — and much nicer for those of us on the receiving end of their messages than the alternative “always be sincere, whether you mean it or not” line we sometimes get.

After interminable waiting, Verizon has finally officially announced they’re going to start carrying the Treo 600.

The New York Times Magazine’s How to Make a Guerrilla Documentary article about the production of Outfoxed has everything you could ask for in a story about Internet-era guerrilla media: footage gathered by recording Fox News 24/7 for six months straight, volunteer watchdogs identifying and categorizing clips via email, simultaneous editing by five different editors coordinated over a secure Web site, even the risk of being sued for Copyright infringement as a way of silencing the work. Throw in Web distribution, coast-to-coast kick-off house parties organized by MoveOn.org, and commentary clips available for download over BitTorrent and what do you get? A hard-hitting political documentary, produced in only four and a half months for only $300,000.

HP’s Multi-user 411 Desktop computer is a cute idea: one Linux box with four monitors and four keyboards, sold to cash-strapped schools. It’s a perfect match really — the typical school computer lab is lots of seats close together, with low CPU needs but a tight budget. Currently they’re only selling them in South Africa, though there’s certainly interest elsewhere.

The strange part is all the nay-saying industry analysts in the Reuters article, with quotes like “As interest in the machine grows, the limited supply has turned a well-intentioned product into a source of confusion among educators and a point of debate among industry analysts, who question whether a major computer maker has an interest in bringing a low-cost alternative to a wider mass market.” Out here in Silicon Valley, that’s the kind of quote we like to put on the gravestones of large companies who refuse to eat their young.

The hardware is nothing special — it’s just a regular Intel box running Mandrake, with 4 NVIDIA Qdro4 100NVS 64MB DH cards (one AGP, three PCI), one PS/2 keyboard and three US keyboards, one audio card and three Telex P-500 USB Digital Audio Converters. Sounds like they’ve done a little bit of software coding to make it all smooth and there’s clearly value in buying from a brand-name company like HP, but if they decide it’s too risky I bet someone else could be producing near-identical machines within a week. Heck, make it a school project and kill two birds with one stone!